


the nobodies

by toromeo (ald0us)



Category: As Night Comes (2014)
Genre: Canon-Typical Homophobia, F/F, M/M, yes I really did this and you should be afraid
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 03:06:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18274526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ald0us/pseuds/toromeo
Summary: What Sean finds with the Misfits is more than just acceptance.





	the nobodies

**Author's Note:**

> Yep, this really is exactly what it says on the tin. Enjoy?

_we walk the streets at night_  
_we go where eagles dare_  
_with jaded eyes and features_  
_you think they really care?_  
— The Misfits  
  
  
  
Ricky stepped back to admire his masterpiece, brows furrowed in thought. He surveyed the pitted concrete retainer wall for a few moments, spraypaint in hand. His black cargo coat was bunched up at the elbows, blonde hair plastered down behind his ears. “What do you think?”  
  
Sean observed the scrawled graffiti, attempting to come up with something thoughtful to say. “It’s crooked,” he said, pointing to the middle. “Right there.”  
  
Ricky rounded on him, pissed off. “Wow, Sean, why don’t you try drawing a dick on a wall with fucking spraypaint? Since it’s apparently so fucking _easy_.” He shoved the can into Sean’s hand, grabbing his wrist in a vice and slapping it into his palm. The metal was still warm from his hand. “Come on, Sean. Show us your artistic fucking prowess.”  
  
Sean looked at him in surprise, a bit taken aback he knew what _prowess_ meant. Or at least, appeared to. It seemed Ricky often used words he didn’t know the definitions of, and was utterly resistant to Sean’s attempts to define them for him. Or maybe he was just fucking with Sean. It was hard to tell.  
  
Sean wasn’t the best artist, but he’d drawn before, and he was pretty sure whatever he’d do was going to be better than the shaky, slightly bulbous penis Ricky drew. Though, he had to admit the alien landing he’d depicted in neon purple on the side of a park bathroom had been pretty artistic, even if it wasn’t entirely recognizeable as an alien landing, or even something bipedal. Sean had asked why the aliens had guns if they were advanced enough for space travel. Ricky had told him to shut the fuck up.  
  
Giving the can a tentative shake, ignoring the muttering and calling of the guys behind him, Sean held the can up to the concrete and gave the nozzle a tentative squeeze. Bright purple leapt out of the can, bubbling on the wall and drying matte.  
  
“Come on, Sean,” Ricky drawled in the background. “Show us your fucking masterpiece.”  
  
Sean ignored him, reminded of the time Ricky had referred to the _Pieta_ as the “ _piñata_.” It had been during Mr. Sanchez’s lecture on Renaissance art, and Sean was pretty sure he’d watched a bit of light leave Mr. Sanchez’s eyes. Julie had followed up a few seconds later to point out that Aphrodite had “really small tits,” pretty much finishing the lecture off. Sarah David had rolled her eyes pointedly and Julie had made a rude gesture back.  
  
Keeping the pressure on the nozzle steady, Sean made careful sweeping gestures across the wall. The only time he’d graffiti’d in New York had been some place on campus where the space had been officially sanctioned for decoration by students; there was a certain thrill to doing it illicitly that Sean hadn’t anticipated.  
  
“Hey, that’s not so bad,” Julie said, in a bored way that suggested she’d rather be beating up toddlers and stealing their candy. She looked up from her Razer flip phone. “Better than yours, Ricky.”  
  
“Fuck you, Julie,” Ricky said, without any real animosity. “My dick is fucking incredible.”  
  
He sidled up to Sean, hooking an arm around Sean’s shoulder and looking at him so that his nose was only a few inches from Sean’s cheek, making Sean’s face heat. He smelled strongly of some kind of off-brand bodyspray, not Axe but the dollar store equivalent. Somehow, it wasn’t entirely off-putting. “Yours isn’t bad, though.” He grinned, as if aware of the double-entendre, and took a philosophical drag on his cigarette, blowing out the smoke into Sean’s face. “Tag it.”  
  
Sean obediently reached out and traced the careful sequence of letters onto the concrete, right under the painted dick’s balls. He could feel Ricky’s gaze buzzing on his skin, intense and not entirely unwelcome.  
  
M-I-S-F-I-T-S.  
  
“Fucking awesome,” Ricky declared, and Sean could feel the tickle of his breath against his cheek. Ricky slapped him on the shoulder, not gently, and gestured to Ozzy who gamely surrendered his hip flask. Ricky slapped it into Sean’s palm, giving him a bodily shake. “Take a fucking sip, Leonardo.”  
  
The cheap whisky burned its way down Sean’s throat and into his stomach, but he managed to cough it down without being mocked too much. The burn of the whisky faded after a few minutes, but as Ricky led them out of the park, arm still around Sean’s shoulders, the heat at the tips of his ears did not.  
  
  
  
  
The rest of the weekend passed in a blur. Sean half-assed his English assignment on _Heart of Darkness_ , filled out some brain-dead history worksheet about the American Revolution, and cleaned up after his mom’s attempt to make macaroni and cheese that ended with the macaroni on the floor and her on the couch sleeping off a hangover. He told himself it wasn’t her fault—money had been tight lately, and that always made his dad more pissed off than normal.  
  
All in all, he was relieved when Monday came around. Ricky greeted him as “Leonardo Dick Vinci” while applying his eyeliner in homeroom; Julie told Ricky he was an idiot and went back to her Tamagachi.  
  
After school they went to the park. Sean watched as Ricky and Julie terrorized a couple of middle-schoolers trying to skateboard, mildly uncomfortable. It was still summer, and wearing his customary black t-shirt and jeans (handed down from some long-gone cousin who was much cooler than him), he could feel sweat prickling his skin. He wasn’t sure how the other guys seemed to be unbothered by it. Ozzy and John were discussing different Manic Panic hair dyes, and Julie was hitting some kid with his skateboard while Ricky giggled maniacally. It was better than stabbing them, Sean decided. He’d never met anyone as enamoured with sharp objects as Ricky was. He wondered if Ricky had been the kid in kindergarten who kept his pencils wicked-sharp and shanked other children with them. He certainly hadn’t been Sean, who had sat in the corner alone and played with plastic animals.  
  
After the park started to bore them and Ricky complained the heat was messing up his eyeliner, they went to 7/11 for slushies. Ricky knew the cashier, a tall, awkward looking guy with a lot of acne and a bad buzzcut, who gave them all an extra-large for the price of a small. He tried to flirt with Julie, but Ricky gently informed him she wasn’t interested before she could rip the guy’s intestines out through his asshole.  
  
“Is that good?” Ricky asked once they were sitting on the parking lot curb, gesturing to Sean’s grape-flavored slushie.  
  
Sean shrugged. “Want to try?”  
  
Ricky grinned. Already, his cherry-flavored slushy had stained his tongue and narrow teeth red. “Sure.”  
  
He took Sean’s cup and replaced it with his own; Sean took a polite sip. It tasted almost exactly the same: like food dye and chemicals. Ricky’s straw had already been gnawed on, the tip of the white plastic covered in tiny toothmarks, the same as all his pens and even his pencils. Freud would have said he had some kind of oral fixation. Sean fixed his thoughts determinedly in another direction, focusing on Ricky’s chipped, black nailpolish.  
  
“That’s not bad,” Ricky said, interrupting Sean’s thoughts—or rather, his avoidance of his own thoughts. He took back his slushy and returned Sean’s. Sean examined his straw for mutilation, but thankfully it had been more or less spared. “Still like the cherry better, though.”  
  
They sat there for a few hours, the smell of gasoline slowly giving Sean a headache. Ricky pointed out the people as they came in to the gas station—the janitor, the gunstore owner a few blocks down, the pawn store cashier, the woman who worked at the nail salon down on fifty-first.  
  
“She’s like double-D,” Julie interjected, between loud slurps. “But also like, a total bitch.”  
  
Sean nodded his mute comprehension. Ricky got bored of this after a while and started spinning his pocket knife in his thin fingers, the way kids at his old school would spin their pencils. He dropped it and swore a couple of times, but watching the flash of the steel blade was still somewhat mesmerizing. He was always picking at things, Sean had noted. Picking at his desk, his clothes, even his own fingers. Playing with whatever was at hand, full of nervous energy.  
  
“I have meds for it,” Ricky had once said, glibly, when he’d caught Sean looking. “ _Ay-Dee-Aych-Dee_.” He emphasized the letters with sharp contempt. “But they’re useless. Don’t do anything.”  
  
A few hours later guy a few years older than them came up to them, hands stuffed into his jeans. He wore a filthy white wifebeater and construction boots covered in paint and dust. Ricky got up wordlessly and paced a few feet away, and they exchanged quiet words; Dillon jostled Sean’s shoulder as he made way for Ricky to pass. Sean looked to the others but they seemed mostly disinterested, as if this were a common occurrence or not worth their interest. Sean watched Ricky and the older man talk, wishing he could read lips. They seemed to exchange something, but the way Ricky held his slushie, his arm and coat blocked Sean’s view.  
  
The other man walked away back to his truck without a backward glance. Ricky watched him go, a cryptic look on his face, then took a sip of his slushie and returned to his perch on the curb. Sean looked at him askance but he ignored it.  
  
When night fell they ended up at Ozzy’s. His parents didn’t even look up from the TV when they came in, too absorbed in _The O’Rielly Factor_. Ozzy grunted a monosyllabic hello as they trooped through the kitchen, snagging a few beers and a bag of chips from the fridge and countertop as they passed through to his room.  
  
The room was almost exactly like Sean would have imagined it: white-walled with matted grey carpet, the mattress lying directly on the floor with messy sheets and black clothes strewn everywhere. Old Metallica, KMFDM, and Marilyn Manson posters lined the walls, a blocky CD player sitting in the corner—probably his prize possession. There were no books, though Julie picked up a stray issue of _Playboy_ and thumbed through it idly. They passed around the beers, Ricky lying down and using Dillon’s knees as a pillow, flicking chips at Julie until she threatened to dismember him.  
  
“Sean,” Ricky said, in the whiny yet commanding way that only he could manage. “Sean, tell us a fucking story.”  
  
Sean swallowed, feeling all their eyes suddenly on him at once. “I don’t know any stories,” he said.  
  
Ricky kicked him—not gently. Sean yelped, nursing his smarting ribs. He kicked like a fucking mule. “You’re from fucking New York,” he said, imperiously. “You have to have done something.”  
  
Christ. Sean cast about for inspiration, slightly desperate. “There was an old lady in our apartment building who turned out to be a serial killer,” he said. This wasn’t entirely true—in fact, it was barely true at all. She’d lived almost halfway across Brooklyn, but he’d read about it in the newspaper and his parents had watched all the news reports about it. “She killed all the do-gooders who came to bring her meals by poisoning them with cleaning products. When they raided her apartment they found all their bodies sitting in the parlor, like she was having some kind of tea party.”  
  
The last part was entirely a fabrication, but the image had lingered in Sean’s imagination for weeks. Had she done it because she was lonely? Tired of people who didn’t really care flitting in and out of her life, plastering her with fake smiles and false comforts, only to leave once their allotted visitation hour was up?  
  
Ricky sat up, electrified. “Really? Did you get to see them? All the dead bastards, I mean?”  
  
“Of course he didn’t, fuckwit,” Julie said, looking up from _Playboy_. “How would he have been inside? The police would have been everywhere.”  
  
“I didn’t see the bodies in the parlor,” Sean said, and Ricky looked visibly disappointed. “But I did visit her once, way before all that. She had tons of cats, but it smelled terrible, like maybe one of them had died. She offered me tea, but I didn’t take it because it smelled so bad and I was supposed to go home and do chores, anyway.”  
  
“Oh my god,” said Ricky. His eyes were alight with wicked glee. “You could have fucking died, the old bitch could have put rat poison in it or roofied you—“  
  
“Because little old ladies totally have a lot of rohypenol lying around, Ricky,” interrupted Julie. Her voice was laced with sarcasm, but there was a certain interest in her voice she couldn’t hide. “Maybe she wanted to like, brainwash Sean into helping her.”  
  
“Or she was worried he’d seen something,” input John helpfully.  
  
“Maybe he would have been the first,” said Ricky, in a gruesome whisper. “Tall dark and handsome virgin—“  
  
“—I am _not_ a virgin—“  
  
“—the crown jewel of her collection,” Ricky added, as if he hadn’t heard. “Did you ever go back?”  
  
“No,” admitted Sean. There was a lady who he sometimes went to tea with, and she was definitely creepy, and she definitely had a smelly apartment full of cats, but she definitely hadn’t wanted to kill him or have any weird designs. “And the police blocked off the whole floor where she lived so I didn’t see any of the bodies. But when I went back after they left I did find this.”  
  
He held up his arm, where his watch was affixed to his wrist. Ricky grabbed at it, unbuckling the watch and examining it. It was an audacious lie—he’d actually gotten it from his father, who had bought it at a pawn shop. But there was no way for any of the Misfits to know that. Sean had to marvel at his own daring.  
  
“ _Richard Graves_ ,” Ricky read aloud from the engraving on the back of the watch, in the awe-stricken voice of someone experiencing a religious epiphany. “Holy fucking shit. You don’t think that could have been one of her victims?”  
  
Sean shrugged eloquently. Julie was trying very hard to look skeptical but was failing; John and Ozzy looked pretty freaked out.  
  
“Holy shit,” said Ricky again, and handed Sean his watch back, almost reluctantly. “Well, that was one hell of a story, Sean.” He, and the others, seemed to look at him with newfound respect; Sean was still stunned at the audacity of his own lie.  
  
They fucked around a few hours after that, Sean already dreading going home. When he arrived, however, and kicked off his sneakers as quietly as he could in the doorway, he was relieved to see his father already passed out on the couch, the TV blaring Nascar reruns. Sean snuck past him into his room and locked the door behind him, hardly daring to turn on the light. After changing into pajamas in darkness, he climbed into bed and tried his best to sleep.  
  
  
  
  
The next day passed like any other. Julie mouthed off through history, Dillon tormented their Algebra teacher by being unable or at least unwilling to do simple multiplication, and Ricky annoyed the lunch lady by comparing the poorly cooked hot dogs to “incredibly sad penises.”  
  
“Seriously,” said Ricky once they were at their own table, holding up the hot dog in question aloft. “Would you fuck that? It’s not even an inch in diameter.”  
  
Red shook his head no; Julie made a face as if to say _why the fuck are you asking me?_  
  
“Well, I wouldn’t.” said Ricky, as if that finalized everything. “Fucking pathetic.”  
  
They all had great fun sticking them in their mouths and imitating hot dog oral, except for Sean, who watched them in a vague combination of embarrassment and jealousy. Ricky smeared Ozzy’s in mayo and laughed so hard he fell out of his chair when Ozzy ate it anyways. Sean caught a couple of people from other tables watching with muted disgust; he caught the word _faggot_ on someone’s lips and looked away, as if scalded.  
  
In English, Mr. Hayes was telling a mostly-asleep or disengaged class about Achilles and Patroclus, about how Achilles refused to fight after being disrespected by Agamemnon.  
  
“Sounds like a big gay baby,” commented Donny, much more loudly than necessary.  
  
Mr. Hayes opened his mouth to reply, probably to remind Donny that Achilles was fated by the gods to die young if he chose a life of war and glory, but before he could say anything Ricky interjected. “Between you and Achilles, Donny, the only one who routinely shaves his chest hair is you.”  
  
Sean hadn’t thought it was possible for a man to look more disappointed than Mr. Hayes already did, but Ricky confirmed once and for all that yes, it was definitely possible. Sean thought to comment that at least in the movie, Achilles definitely shaved, but thought better of it and kept the thought to himself.  
  
“At least I’m not actually gay,” Donny sneered, the height of high school wit, and a few people sniggered. In all fairness, it wasn’t that many. Most of them were asleep.  
  
“Shut the fuck up, Donny,” said Julie and Sarah David, almost simultaneously; they exchanged surprised and mutually suspicious glances.  
  
“The contemporary Greeks had a concept of sexual orientation that was far different from ours,” Mr. Hayes cut in, much faster on his feet than Sean would expect from a high school English teacher. “They didn’t conceptualize in terms of _gay_ and _straight_ , but between men relationships were often described in terms of power and hierarchy.”  
  
Ricky grinned, and Sean smelt disaster. “So was Achilles a top or a bottom?”  
  
Behind him, Ozzy, John, and Dillon all sniggered; Julie looked rather amused, turning a sharp, expectant look on their teacher. A few people were looking at Ricky with vague discomfort; Sarah rolled her eyes. Mr. Hayes, for his part, didn’t back down. “Contemporary sources disagreed.”  
  
That wasn’t entirely true. If Alexander the Great and Hephaestion were any indicator, Achilles was, in fact, a bottom. Again, Sean kept this observation to himself. Ricky opened his mouth again but blessedly Mr. Hayes was, quite literally, saved by the bell. It rang shrill and harsh and whatever Ricky was going to say was drowned out by the sudden explosion of movement from the students around him, standing and pushing back chairs and packing bags.  
  
It wasn’t the first time someone had made fun of Ricky for being gay. It was, of course, still the go-to insult for anyone without the brains to come up with something better, which was to say the entire population of the school, especially the jocks who let their sports prowess go to their heads. Ricky took it about as well as he took any other insult, which was to say either ‘not giving a shit’ or ‘throwing rocks through your windshield,” each with the predictability of the wind. Sean sometimes wanted to shake him, grab him by the shoulders and ask, _but are you?_


End file.
